The talent wars are not likely to end anytime soon. Various trends—including the widespread adoption of digital technologies, the increasing need to tailor operations for different customer segments, and a heightened focus on supply chain risk—will continue to raise the bar for supply chains and, by extension, the skills required to manage them.
For many organizations, the talent problem is exacerbated by the desire to keep headcount costs down. Indeed, supply chain headcount costs can be considerable, easily reaching 10 percent of revenue, according to PwC’s Performance Measurement Group benchmark research. Yet focusing exclusively on the cost component of the talent equation can ultimately prove detrimental, given that some of the positions needed to manage today’s supply chains demand higher salaries than they did even a few years ago.
